Cognitive Engineering

In this episode, Fraser McGruer, Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Chris Wragg explore one of the most enduring pieces of technical advice: have you tried turning it off and on again?What begins with a glitchy video call and a reluctant router reboot quickly develops into a wide-ranging discussion about systems, states and the surprisingly deep logic behind rebooting—not just in computers, but in societies, economies and even our own lives.The team unpack what actually happens when you power cycle a device, from memory leaks and zombie processes to cosmic rays flipping bits in memory. From there, they build a broader framework: what counts as a “state”, what a “good state” might be, and when a system can—or cannot—be reset.Peter introduces a theory of rebootability, with criteria including whether a system has an external reference point, whether it depends on consensus, and whether it can be restarted from outside itself. These ideas are applied to everything from national constitutions and financial systems to c